A New Ethic of 'Older' : Subjectivity, surgery, and self-stylization

This book mobilizes considerable theoretical and empirical resources to interrogate and problematize the social category of ‘older’ in the context of cosmetic surgery. It disrupts and critiques dominant renderings of ‘older’ and suggests that contemporary aesthetic and ethical values inform a new ethic of ‘older’. Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault’s work on ethics, the book proposes that cosmetic surgery can be understood as a contemporary practice of self-care that transforms subjectivity in relation to a desirable mode of being.

Through its themes of subjectivity, surgery, and self-stylization this book critically examines the cultural constraints and incitements that shape the practice of cosmetic surgery by older people. The book problematizes anti-ageing discourses to provide a nuanced descriptive, ethical, and political reading of ‘older’ identity politics nested within the contemporary ethico-political terrain of self-care.

A New Ethic of ‘Older’ aims to de-territorialize the ‘older’ subject from normative discourses of ageing and theorize becoming ‘older’. Evidence of an active cultural politics of ‘older’ emerges from the critically reflexive engagement of older people with cosmetic surgery. This engagement constitutes a ‘cutting critique’ of ageing discourses enmeshed in an aesthetic mode of subjectivation that underpins ‘a new ethics of old age’.

The book will appeal to those in the fields of Cultural Gerontology, Ageing Studies, Critical Psychology, Sociology, and Cultural Geography. The methodological approach will be of interest to academics and students exploring the application of Foucault’s work on care of the self to contemporary contexts and practices.